I've had this fairly recent trend of waking up in the middle of the night and then being unable to get back to sleep for as much as a couple of hours. A notable exception to this happened a few days ago, and I'm pretty sure it was because of the 1/3 of an edible I ate on Saturday, after which, for maybe three nights in a row, I slept like a baby all night. I guess the effects finally wore off again? Maybe I should have another edible? Putting me to sleep seems to be the only thing I get any reliable use out of edibles anyway; I might as well give it some practical applications.

I had trouble sleeping again last night. Then, as is typical in these cases, once I finally got back to sleep, I did not reliably wake up particularly early. My alarm went off at close to 5:30 and, okay, I suppose I could have spent less time on Twitter and gotten into the bathroom to start getting ready a bit earlier than 5:50. Because today was a shampoo day -- which I do every three days -- that also made my morning routine longer than on other days. It was 7:05 before I was actually going out the door, and in an ideal world, I'm leaving closer to 6:45 or 6:50.

I checked One Bus Away to figure out which bus was best to wait for. I actually have several options. The #11 that comes right to my building and takes me straight downtown? Not coming for another twelve minutes. The #2 down on Union Street? Even longer. I checked the #8 leaving from four blocks away at 15th & John and settled on that one: it was coming in 12 minutes but it would take me roughly eight to walk there, and that bus is a straight shot down Denny Way to within a couple of blocks from work -- no transfers or walking halfway today, no time.

Except that #8 wasn't coming in 12 minutes. I discovered once I got to the bus stop that I had accidentally looked at the stop for eastbound buses, not westbound. My #8 wasn't actually coming until 7:19 -- and then it was 3 minutes late. Stupid bus! Oh well. I got some more reading done of My Cat Yugoslavia. Now that I'm roughly fifty pages in, the talking cat has finally been introduced. It's very odd. The main character meets this cat in a gay bar, and it apparently wears a shirt like a person and can stand on its hind legs like a person and even sings along to Tina Turner and Cher (specifically "Believe"). I couldn't necessarily tell you why, but I am way more on board with a regular cat that can talk, as a character, than a humanoid cat character. That just feels like a step too far. At first I thought this cat was even as big as a person, and when Bekim, the main character, said "I would have him," I feared that meant sex -- like, did Ivan trick me into reading a book that is the cat version of The Shape of Water? Bekim Fucks a Cat?? Perhaps not: soon enough the cat was described as jumping onto Bekim's shoulder, or weaving through pints on the bar, which would suggest the cat, while talking and wearing clothes (a shirt, if nothing else -- although he's wearing pants and a jacket in the illustration on the book cover), is actually the same size as a real cat. So I guess I'll reserve judgment for now.

So anyway. That's why I got to work twenty minutes later than usual today. And I am literally the only one who even moderately cares. Nobody at the office could give half a shit. So many people at other jobs are under so many pointlessly arbitrary pressures, and I just don't ever have that experience. I get away with murder. You should see the pile of bodies. Luckily this new office location has way more space.

-- चार हजार दो सौ और चालीस-दो --

-- चार हजार दो सौ और चालीस-दो --

There's not much else for me to catch you up on. Shobhit and I must have watched five or six half-hour episodes of One Day at a Time on Netflix last night. Sometimes that show is super dumb; most of the time it's pretty good. I'm enjoying it, on average. It's only about 13 episodes per season, so, even though it's formatted like a traditional sitcom, it's not scheduled at all like one -- no 26-episode seasons here. And they all get released at once. It won't be too long before we burn through both seasons, I'm sure.

Before the final couple of episodes we watched, we did the New York Times mini-crossword and then the Washington Post regular crossword which actually comes from the Los Angeles Times. (It's complicated, but free!) Today's crossword was surprisingly easy to solve, and we got it done in little more than half an hour.

Shobhit worked until 5 p.m. yesterday, but I got home at about 5:15 and he was home hardly more than ten minutes after that. He asked me to make the orzo pasta we've had in the cupboard for months, suggesting I add beans to it for protein and lots of veggie for volume. I wasn't so sure about the beans idea, but then I looked up recipes and found one that called for black beans and veggies. We had black beans, and indeed with orzo pasta, I think black beans are better than pinto or kidney or certainly garbanzo beans. With added veggie sausage and parmesan cheese it made for quite the tasty meal, actually. I don't think we ever made a dish quite like this before, but I would totally do this one again.